When an individual passes away it is customary for the body of the individual to be viewed by family and friends at a funeral home. After the viewing, a funeral or other memorial service is generally held at the funeral home or a church to commemorate the life of the deceased. Thereafter, a grave side service may be held with family and friends looking on. With the completion of the grave side service the casket is lowered into the grave where it will remain. A similar service may be held prior to or after the deceased is cremated. Usually after cremation the cremated remains are collected and presented to the family in a cremation urn.
The casket in which the deceased is displayed can be customized to fit the needs and preferences of the deceased and the family. For instance, a wide variety of materials, finishes, colors and decorative ornamentation can be chosen to meet these needs. The purchaser of a casket can also customize the casket using a variety of interchangeable stylized trim, for example, corner ornaments. The purchaser may select from a number of stylized corner ornaments each of which has been ornamented to represent a “theme.” The purchaser thus selects a corner ornament design having a theme representative of an aspect of the deceased's life to personalize the casket, for example, a golf corner ornament design could be selected for installation on the casket to reflect that the deceased was an avid golfer.
Once the casket is buried or the deceased is cremated and the funeral or other memorial service is completed, the families are left with few tangible reminders of the funeral or memorial service. Most families receive flowers at the funeral home which pay respect to the deceased and his or her surviving family. These flowers, however, wilt and die after a short time, leaving the family with few remembrances of the funeral or memorial service. It is desirable for the families to receive a more tangible and permanent reminder of the funeral or memorial service.
Prior solutions to this need may be seen in the quick change casket ornament of the assignee's U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,340,810, 6,928,706, and 6,591,466, which may be removed from the casket and mounted on either the plaque of the assignee's U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,210,204, 6,883,212, and 6,557,222 or the pedestal of the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 6,691,385 and presented to a family member or loved one of the deceased. All of these patents are hereby incorporated by reference herein as if fully set forth in their entirety.
Another more recent solution to this need may be seen with reference to the assignee's U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/605,073 for Memorial Casket and Method, hereby incorporated by reference herein as if fully set forth in its entirety. In this application there is disclosed a casket comprising a casket shell adapted to receive the remains of a deceased and having a pair of side walls, a pair of end walls, and a bottom wall, a casket cap closable on the casket shell, and at least one medallion mounted on either an interior surface or an exterior surface of either the cap or the shell, the medallion having text and/or graphics representing a life aspect of the deceased. In one embodiment, the cap includes a dish assembly mounted to an underside of the cap. The dish assembly includes a cap panel comprising a sheet of magnetic material. The medallion has a magnet on a rear side thereof that allows the medallion to be mounted on the cap panel in any desired position.
A typical medallion of the type used with the casket of application Ser. No. 12/605,073 is on the order of about 4.25 inches in diameter and is cast in a die from pewter or aluminum. The die includes a three-dimensional image of the desired life aspect of the deceased; that three-dimensional image is cast into the medallion during the casting process. Once the medallion has been cast and removed from the die, the three-dimensional image of the medallion is hand-painted.
While this type of medallion has met with success, the production process of this type of medallion is expensive, tedious, and time consuming. Each different life aspect image requires a separate die. The dies can be expensive, and each die can take weeks to produce. Depending on the popularity of a particular life image, its respective die may only be used a few times to produce only a few medallions, thus driving up the cost per medallion for that particular life image. Each medallion, once cast, must have its three-dimensional image hand painted, which is tedious and time consuming.
It would be desirable to devise a casket medallion which is less expensive to produce, takes less time to produce, and which requires less labor to produce.